Thursday, January 16, 2014

Net Neutrality and What It May Mean To Your Dental Office

Many of you may heard about a recent appeals court decision that ruled the Federal Communications Commission does not have the
authority to bar Internet service providers from favoring one type of
traffic over another. So data is not data anymore. Your ISP can now determine what and how much it costs, you the consumer for different types of data. So surfing to Healthcare.gov would be different then watching a movie from Netflix. Previously the FCC had argued that it has the authority to require Internet
services companies like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T to treat all
Internet packets (data) crossing its network equally.

If you want to know more about Net Neutrality and the decision then surf on over to this article on Re/code.

Now how may this affect your dental office? For now nothing will change. Data will be treated as data. In the future you may potentially see longer upload times for your online backups, if your ISP thinks you are using too much bandwidth. They may charge you more for the increased use of bandwidth. This maybe similar to what we now see with cellular data, with data caps and slowing of speeds if you exceed your data cap. All your worries might go away if you are willing to pay more for the privilege. Other possibilities will be if you use specific data services you may be able to use this bandwidth but it will be paid for by someone else. The example of this type of arrangement is what Google does with most of its services such as Gmail. Give the service away in exchange for information.

About Me

Martin Jablow DMD, is America's Dental Technology Coach. He practices general dentistry in a group setting in Woodbridge, NJ. Dr. Jablow promotes the use of technology in the dental office to improve efficiency and patient care. He lectures and writes articles on the use of technology to enhance the practice of dentistry. Dr. Jablow can be reached by email at marty at dentaltechnologycoach dot com